Annual Haircut

            On Friday morning I memorized the second cop dialogue in "Le java des chaussettes à clous" (The Dance of the Studded Stockings) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished memorizing "Relax Baby Be Cool" by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords, but all anyone has posted is one that uses "do re mi, etc" in the place of chords. I guess I can figure it out that way by establishing which key I want to sing in and then work it out from there. But while I was writing down the placements of the "do, re, mis" Open Office froze and I had to shut it down, and so I lost what I'd started, though I'd only done the first couple of lines. I got them again later and I'll finish it tomorrow. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            At 10:00 I headed for Topcuts at Yonge and St Clair for my first haircut in exactly a year. On the Bloor Street bike lane at around Christie there was a guy talking on his phone while his two dogs played in a puddle at the edge of the sidewalk. While the golden lab drank from it the smaller black lab laid down in it on his belly and slowly crawled forward to get between his friends mouth and the dirty water. 

            It took me less than 40 minutes to get to Top Cuts and so I was 20 minutes early. I sat outside but Amy saw me and told me she could take me right away. This was the first day she's cut hair in eight months since on Wednesday, the first day of opening up, she was answering the phone. I took pictures in the mirror from the beginning to the end. I said I was surprised that my hair didn't grow that much in a year. She said that when we get older even hair growth slows down, but it seems to me that's not true for beards, hair on the ears and nose hair. I asked her if Amy was her real name and she said it's just a Canadian nickname but her Thai name is too long and hard to pronounce for Canadians. It felt so much better to have all that hair off my head. I took the seniors discount but I gave Amy a $5 tip anyway. 

            I felt lighter riding home. Yonge Street north of Bloor now has a bike lane but it's frequently blocked by vehicles, at least at that time of day. Shooting down Yonge Street from St Clair isn't as much fun now because the bike lane curves around the covid patios. Hopefully those are temporary. 

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought two bags of grapes, three bags of cherries, two pints of blueberries, one pint of strawberries, a watermelon, kettle chips, two small jars of salsa, five year old cheddar, Greek yogourt, skyr, two cans of peaches, two boxes of spoon size shredded wheat and a jug of lemonade. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos after my haircut. 

            For lunch I had kettle chips, salsa and yogourt with a glass of orange juice. 

            After posting my blogs and my daily tweet I worked on my poem series "My Blood In A Bug." 

           I was eating cherries and bit down so hard on a stone that one of my bottom back teeth was in pain when I chewed. 

           I sewed the ends of two strips of leather so they only come apart at the snaps and it fits around the surreal shock therapy machine I'm making for my "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" video. The strap will hold together some of the leather pieces that are covering my Roland amp. Next I need to get all the leather pieces back on and then figure out how to get the top front part to fit close enough to the amp so that when I tear holes in the leather for the switches and knobs they will show through and look accessible. 

           I colourized three more damage spots in my skateboarder photo.

           My tooth felt worse as the evening came on. I think I might have cracked it and exposed a nerve. It hurt mostly when anything touched the area and that included saliva, my tongue or when I swallowed, or when another part of my mouth touched it. I'd thought it was on the bottom but it seemed to be at the top on the left. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg for dinner while watching two episodes of Mayberry RFD. 

            The first story was pretty lame. Sam, Goober, Howard and Emmett are preparing to go on a camping trip together. When they see that Mike and his friend Harold continue to be angry at one another days after a petty argument, the adults decide to have Mike and Harold come camping with them to show them by example how to get along. But on the trip one thing after another goes wrong, the worst being that they are driven by rain into the small camper. The men begin to argue over petty things and it seems that it's seeing the adults not getting along that brings Mike and Harold back together. Sam cuts the trip short because the arguing is getting worse but when they get back home they all apologize to each other. 

            In the second story Sam is bothered by the fact that his crop of string beans has turned out so small. He has done everything for them, added all of the important nutrients and been especially careful about the water but nothing has helped. To make matters worse he finds out that the same bean seeds he'd given Millie for her garden have resulted in the largest string beans he's ever seen and to top it all off she never added anything special and the only thing she did was talk to them. When Sam and Millie go on a double date with Goober and Marilyn, Sam is sulky and untalkative. Finally Sam accepts that it was just one of those things and he gives Millie a basket of his prize tomatoes as a peace offering. Millie doesn't tell him that her tomatoes are better too. 

            Marilyn was played by Peg Shirley, who appeared in several films and starred in the TV movies, "Message to My Daughter", "Eric", "White Mama" and "Moving Target."